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A Short History 
of France 



Mary Platt Parmele 




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BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



A SHORT HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLAND 

A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE 

A SHORT HISTORY OF GERMANY 

A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN 



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HISTORY OF FRANCE 



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"TlVt^. MAEY (pLATT) PAEMELE 



XEW YORK 

CHAELES SCEIBNEE'S SONS 
1899 



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COPYBIGHT, 1894, ET 

. WILLIAM BEVERLEY HARISOH 



Copyright, 1898, b\ 
CHAELE8 SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Bequest 

Albert Adsit Olemons 

Aug. 24, 1038 

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PREFACE. 

In an attempt to tell the story of a great 
nation in about 100 pages, it is needless to 
say there must be a rigid exclusion of all 
save essential facts. To those already famil- 
iar with the subject, this sketch is offered 
merely as a reminder of the sequence of 
conditions and events in fche evolution of 
France ; while to the student it is presented 
as a framework upon vv'hich may be placed, 
in orderly and comprehensible fashion, the 
results of future reading and research. 

To the latter class I would suggest that 
a series of papers, written upon the most 
prominent themes found in the Table of 
Contents, will bear fruit in knowledge more 
real and vital than may be obtained from 
the writings of others, however eloquent 
and vivid the presentation. 

M. P. P. 

New York, July 23, 1894. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapteb I. 

The Aryan Family of Nations — Keltic Race — An- 
cient Gaul — Gauls in Rome — Gauls in Greece 
and in Asia Minor 9 

Chapter II. 
Roman Conquest of Gaul— Julius Caesar 18 

Chapter III. 

Birth of Christianity — Its Dissemination— Persecu- 
tion at Lyons by order of Marcus Aurelius — The 
Roman Empire Espouses Christianity under 
Constantine 23 

Chapter IV. 

Gaul Overrun and Subjugated by Franks— Clovis 
King — Decay of the Merovingian Line — Maire 
du PalaisKing de facto — Charles Martel — Birth 
of Mohammedanism — Its Triumphs — Christen- 
dom Threatened — Pepin King — Charlemagne — 
Alliance with Pope— France, Italy, and Ger- 
many Emerge as Separate Nationalities 30 



6 CONTENTS. 

Chapter V. 

PAGE 

The Northmen— Beginnings of Feudalism in France 
— Normandy Bestowed upon the Northmen — 
Conquest of England by William, Duke of Nor- 
mandy — Albigenses — Inquisition at Toulouse — 
The Crusades 39 

Chapter VI. 

Decline of Feudalism— Creation of the Commune — 
Charles VII. — Henry V. in France — Joan of 
Arc 47 

Chapter VII. 

Francis I.— Huguenots— Catharine de' Medici — 
Francis II 54 

Chapter VIII. 

Massacre of St. Bartholomew— Henry III.— Henry 
IV. 63 

Chapter IX. 
Edict of Nantes— Louis XIII. —Richelieu 71 

Chapter X. 

Louis XrV. — Revocation of the Edict of Nantes — 
Louis XV. — Age of Voltaire and Rousseau — The 
Gathering Storm 77 



CONTENTS. 7 

Chapter XI. 

PAGE 

Louis XVT. and Marie Antoinette — Araorican Col- 
ouii'S Arruyod Against England — French Aid to 
Apierica — Smouldering Fires of Discontent — 
Louis Convokes States-General — National As- 
sembly Created by Commons — Bastille Attacked 
— Revolutiou— Execution of King 87 

Chapter XII. 

Napoleon Bonaparte — Toulon — Campaign in Italy — 
Empire Established — Europe Under the Feet of 
the Great Corsican — Marie Louise — Waterloo — 
Louis XVIII. — Charles X.— Louis Philippe — 
Second Republic — Louis Napoleon President — 
Second Empire — Napoleon III. — Franco-Prus- 
sian War — Sedan — Third Republic — Review of 
Present Conditions 97 



A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 



CHAPTER I. 

One of the greatest achievements of mod- 
ern i-esearch is the discovery of a key by 
which we may determine the kinship of na- 
tions. What we used to conjecture, we now 
know. An identity in the structural form 
of language establishes with scientific certi- 
tude that however diverse their character 
and civilizations, Russian, German, English- 
man, Frenchman, Spaniard, are all but 
branches from the same parent stem, are all 
alike children of the Asiatic Aryan. 

So skilful are modern metnods of ques- 
tioning the past, and so determined the effort 
to find out its secrets, we may yet know the 
origin and history of this wonderful Asiatic 
people, and when and why they left their 
native continent and colonized upon the 



10 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

northern shores of the Mediterranean. Cer- 
tain it is, however, that, more centuries be- 
fore the Christian era than there have been 
since, they had peopled Western Europe. 

This branch of the Aryan family is known 
as the Keltic, and was older brother to the 
Teuton and Slav, which at a much later 
period followed them from the ancestral 
home, and appropriated the middle and east- 
ern portions of the European Continent. 

The name of Gaul was given to the ter- 
ritory lying between the Ocean and the 
Mediterranean, and the Pyrenees and the 
Alps. And at a later period a portion of 
Northern Gaul, and the islands lying north 
of it, received from an invading chieftain 
and his tribe the name Brit or Britain (or 
Pryd or Prydain). 

If the mind could be carried back on the 
track of time, and we could see what we 
now call France as it existed twenty cen- 
turies before the Christian era, we should 
behold the same natural features: the same 
mountains rearing their heads; the same 
rivers flowing to the sea; the same plains 
stretching out in the sunlight. But instead 



' EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE, 11 

of vines and flowers and cultivated fields we 
should behold great herds of wild ox and 
elk. and of swine as fierce as wolves, rang- 
ing in a climate as cold as Norway; and 
vast inaccessible forests, the home of beasts 
of prey, which contended with man for 
food and shelter. 

Let us read Guizot's description of life in 
Gaul five centuries before Christ : 

" Here lived six or seven millions of men 
a bestial life, in dwellings dark and low, 
built of wood and clay and covered with 
branches or straw, open to daylight by the 
door alone and confusedly heaped together 
behind a rampart of timber, earth, and 
stone, which enclosed and protected what 
they were pleased to call — a toivn.^^ 

Such was the Paris, and such the French- 
men of the age of Pericles ! And the same 
tides that washed the sands of Southern 
Gaul, a few hours later ebbed and flowed 
upon the shores of Greece — rich in culture, 
with refinements and subtleties in art which 
are the despair of the world to-day — with 
an intellectual endowment never since at- 
tained by any people. 



12 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

The same sun which rose upon temples 
and palaces and life serene and beautiful in 
Greece, an hour later lighted sacrificial altars 
and hideous orgies in the forests of Gaul. 
While the Gaul was nailing the heads of 
human victims to his door, or hanging 
them from the bridle of his horse, or burn- 
ing or flogging his prisoners to death, the 
Greek, with a literature, an art, and a civil- 
ization in ripest perfection, discussed with 
his friends the deepest problems of life and 
destiny, which were then baffling human 
intelligence, even as they are with us to- 
day. Truly we of Keltic and Teuton de- 
scent are late-comers upon the stage of 
national life. 

There was no promise of greatness in an- 
cient Gaul. It was a great unregulated force, 
rushing hither and thither. Impelled by 
insatiate greed for the possessions of their 
neighbors, there was no permanence in their 
loves or their hatreds. The enemies of to- 
day were the allies of to-morrow. Guided 
entirely by the fleeting desires and passions 
of the moment, with no far-reaching plans 
to restrain, the sixty or more tribes compos- 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 13 

ing the Gallic people were in perpetual state 
of feud and anarchy, apparently insensible 
to the ties of brotherhood, which give con- 
cert of action, and stability in form of na- 
tional life. If they overran a neighboring 
country, it seemed not so much for perma- 
nent acquisition, as to make it a camping- 
ground until its resources were exhausted. 

We read of one Massillia who came with 
a colony of Greeks long ages ago, and after 
founding the city of Marseilles, created a 
narrow bright border of Greek civilization 
along the Southern edge of the benighted 
land. It was a brief illumination, lasting 
only a century or more, and leaving few 
traces ; but it may account for the superior 
intellectual quality of the southern pro- 
vinces in future France. 

It requires a vast extent of territory to 
sustain a people living by the chase, and 
upon herds and flocks ; hence the area which 
now amply maintains forty millions of 
Frenchmen was all too small for six or seven 
million Gauls ; and they were in perpetual 
struggle with their neighbors for land — 
more land. 



14 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

"Give US land," they said to the Eo- 
mans, and when land was denied them and 
the gates of cities disdainfully closed upon 
their messengers, not land, but vengeance, 
was their cry; and hordes of half-naked 
barbarians trampled down the vineyards, 
and rushed, a tumultuous torrent, upon 
Rome. 

The Romans could not stand before this 
new and strange kind of warfare. The 
Gauls streamed over the vanquished legions 
into the Eternal City, silent and deserted 
save only by the Senate and a few who re- 
mained intrenched in the Citadel ; and there 
the barbarians kept them besieged for seven 
months, while they made themselves at 
home amid uncomprehended luxuries. 

Of course Roman skill and courage at last 
dislodged and drove them back. But the 
fact remained that the Gaul had been there, 
— master of Rome ; that the ironclad legions 
had been no match for his naked force, and 
a new sensation thrilled through the length 
and breadth of Gaul. It was the first throb 
of national life. The sixty or more frag- 
ments drew closer together into something 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 15 

like Gallic unity — with a common danger to 
meet, a common foe to drive back. 

Hereafter there was another hunger to be 
appeased besides that for food and land ; a 
hunger for conquest, for vengeance, and for 
glory for the Gallic name. National pride 
was born. 

For years they hovered like wolves about 
Rome. But skill and superior intelligence 
tell in the centuries. It took long — and cost 
no end of blood and treasure; but two hun- 
dred years from the capture of Rome, the 
Gauls were driven out of Italy, and the Alps 
pronounced a barrier set by Nature herself 
against barbarian encroachments. 

Italy was not the only country suffering 
from the destroying footsteps of the West- 
ern Kelts. There had been long ago an over- 
flow of a tribe in Northern Gaul (the Kym- 
rians), which had hewed and plundered its 
way south and eastward ; until at the time 
of Alexander (340 B.C.) it was knocking at 
the gates of Macedonia. 

Stimulated by the success at Rome fifty 
years earlier, they were, with fresh inso- 
lence, demanding "land," and during the 



16 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

centuries which followed, the Gallic name 
acquired no fresh lustre in Greece. Half- 
naked, gross, ferocious and ignorant, some- 
times allies, but always a scourge, they 
finally crossed the Hellespont (278 B.C.), and 
turned their attention to Asia Minor. And 
there, at last, we find them settled in a prov- 
ince called Gallicia, where they lived with- 
out amalgamating with the people about 
them; it is said, even as late as 400 j'-ears 
after Christ, speaking the language of their 
tribal home (what is now Belgium). And 
these were the Galatians — the " foolish Gala- 
tians," to whom Paul addressed his epistle; 
and we have followed up this Gallic thread 
simply because it mingles with the larger 
strand of ancient and sacred history with 
which we are all so familiar. 

It is not strange that Roman courage be- 
came a by-word. The fibre of Rome was 
toughened by perpetual strain of conflict. 
Even while she was struggling with Gaul and 
while the echoes of the Hunnish invasion 
were still resounding through the Continent, 
Hannibal, with his hosts, was pouring 



EVOLUTIOX OP AN EMPIRE. 17 

through Gaul and gathering accessions from 
that people as he swept clown into Italy. 
Then, with the memories of the Carthaginian 
wars still fresh at Rome, the Goths were at 
her gates, — their blows directed with a solid- 
ity superior to that of the barbarians who 
had preceded them. Where the Gauls had 
knocked, the Goths thundered. 

Again the city was invaded by barbarian 
feet, and again did superior training and in- 
telligence drive back the invading torrent 
and triumph over native brute force. 

Such, in brief outline, was the condition 
of the centuries just before the Christian 
era. 



CHAPTER II. 

The making of a nation is not unlike 
bread or cake making. One element is used 
as the basis, to which are added other com- 
ponent parts, of varying qualities, and the 
result we call England, or Germany, or 
France. The steps by which it is accom- 
plished, the blending and fusing of the ele- 
ments, require centuries, and the process 
makes what we call — history. 

It was written in the book of fate that 
Gaul should become a great nation ; but not 
until fused and interpenetrated with two 
other nationalities. She must first be hu- 
manized and civilized by the Roman, and 
then energized and made free from the Ro- 
man by the Teuton. 

The instrument chosen for the former 
was Julius Csesar, and for the latter — five 
centuries later — Clovis, the Frankish leader. 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 19 

It is safe to affirm that no man lias ever 
SO clianged the course of liuman events as 
did Julius Caesar. Napoleon, who strove to 
imitate him 1800 years later, was a cliarla- 
tan in comparison ; a mere scene-shifter on 
a great theatrical stage. Few traces of his 
work remain upon humanity to-day. 

Caesar opened up a patliway for the old 
civilizations of the world to flow into West- 
ern Europe, and the sodden mass of barbar- 
ism was infused with a life-compelling cur- 
rent. This was not accomplished by placing 
before the inferior race a higher ideal of life 
for imitation, but by a mingling of the blood 
of the nations — a transfusion into Gallic 
veins of the germs of a higher living and 
thinking— thus making them heirs to the 
great civilizations of antiquity. 

"Was any human event ever fraught with 
such consequences to the human race as the 
conquest of Gaul by Julius Cjcsar ? 

The Gallic wars had for centuries drained 
the treasure and taxed the resources of 
Rome. Ca3sar conceived the audacious idea 
of stopping them at their source — in fact, of 
making Gaul a lloman province. 



20 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

It was a marvellous exhibition, not sim- 
ply of force, but of force wielded by supreme 
intelligence and craft. He had lived four 
years among this people and knew their 
sources of weakness, their internal jealousies 
and rivalries, their incohesiveness. When 
they hurled themselves against Rome, it 
was as a mass of sharp fragments. When 
the Goths did the same, it was as one solid, 
indivisible body. Csesar saw that by adroit 
management he could disintegrate this 
people, even while conquering them. 

By forcibly maintaining in power those 
who submitted to him, being by turns gen- 
tle and severe, ingratiating here, terrifying 
there, he established a tremendous personal 
force; and during nine years carried on 
eight campaigns, marvels in the art of war, 
as well as in the subtler methods of negoti- 
ation and intrigue. He had successively 
dealt with all the Keltic tribes, even includ- 
ing Great Britain, subjugating either 
through their own rivalries, or by his invin- 
cible arm. 

Equally able to charm and to terrify, he 
had all the gifts, all the means to success 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 21 

and empire, that cau bo possessed by man. 
Great in politics as in war, as full of re- 
source in the forum as on the battle-field, 
he was by nature called to dominion. 

It was not as a patriot, simply intent upon 
freeing Rome of an harassing enemy, that 
he endured those nine years in Gaul — not 
as a great leader burning with military ar- 
dor that he conducted those eight campaigns. 
The conquest of Gaul meant the greater 
conquest of Eome. The one was accom- 
plished; he now turned his back upon the 
devastated country, and prepared to com- 
plete his great project of human ascendency. 

Rome was mistress of the world; he — 
would be master of Rome. 



CHAPTER III. 

While the Star of Empire was thus mov- 
ing toward the West, another and brighter 
star was about to arise in the East. So ac- 
customed are we to the story, that we lose 
all sense of wonder at its recital. 

Julius Caesar's brief triumph was over. 
Marc Antony had recited his virtues over his 
bier, Eome had wept, and then forgotten 
him in the absorbing splendors of his nephew 
Augustus. In an obscure village of an ob- 
scure country in Asia Minor, the young wife 
of a peasant finds shelter in a stable, and 
gives birth to a son, who is cradled in the 
straw of a manger, from which the cattle 
are feeding. 

Can the mind conceive of human circum- 
stances more lowly? The child grew to man- 
hood, and in his thirty-three years of life was 
never lifted above the obscure sphere into 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 23 

which he was born; never spoke from the 
vantage-ground of worldly elevation, — sim- 
ply moving among people of his own station 
in life, mechanics, fishermen, and peasants, 
he told of a religion of love, a gospel of 
peace, for which he was willing to die. 

Who would have dreamed that this was 
the germ of the most potent, the most re- 
generative force the world had ever known? 
That thrones, empires, principalities, and 
powers would melt and crumble before his 
name? Of all miracles, is not this the great- 
est? 

The passionate ardor with which this re- 
ligion was propagated in the first two cen- 
turies had no motive but the yearning to 
make others share in its benefits and hopes ; 
and to this end to accept the belief that Jesus 
Christ had come in fulfilment of the promise 
of a Saviour, — who should be sent to this 
world clothed with divine authority to es- 
tablish a s])iritual kingdom, in which he was 
King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Mediator be- 
tween us and the Father, of whom he was 
the " only begotten Son." 

The religion in its essence was absolutely 



24 EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE. 

simple. Its founder summed it up in two 
sentences, — expressing the duty of man to 
man, and of man to God, That was all the 
Theology he formulated. 

For two centuries the religion of Christ 
was an elementary spiritual force. It ap- 
pealed only to the highest attributes and 
longings of the human soul, and under its 
sustaining influence frail women, men, and 
even children were able to endure tortures, 
of which we cannot read even now without 
shuddering horror. 

Nature's method of gardening is very beau- 
tiful. She carefully guards the seed until 
it is ripe, then she bursts the imprisoning 
walls and gives it to the winds to distribute. 
Precisely such method was used in dissemi- 
nating Christianity. It was not for one 
people — it was for the healing of the nations, 
and its home was wherever man abides. 

Nearly five decades after Christ's death 
upon the cross, Jerusalem was destroyed by 
Titus. The home of Christianity was 
effaced. At just the right moment the en- 
closing walls had broken, and freed to the 



EVOLUTION OK AN EMPIRE. 25 

winds the germs in all their primitive 
purity. 

Imperial favor had not tarnished it, hu- 
man ambitions had not employed and de- 
graded it, nor had it been made into com- 
plex system by ingenious casuists. The pure 
spiritual truth, unsullied as it came from 
the hand of its founder, was scattered broad- 
cast, as the band of Christians dispersed 
throughout the Roman Empire, naturally 
forming into communities here and there, 
which became the centres of Christian prop- 
agandism. Lyons in Gaul was such a cen- 
tre. 

The fires of persecution had been lighted 
here and there throughout the Empire, and 
the Emperor Nero, under whom the Apos- 
tles Peter and Paul are said to have suffered 
martyrdom, had amused himself by making 
torches of the Christians at Rome. But un- 
til 177 A.D. Gaul was exempt from such hor- 
rors. 

Marcus Aurelius — that peerless pagan, — 
large in intelligence, exalted in character, 
and guided by a conscientious rectitude 



26 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

which has made his name shine like a star 
in the lurid light of Roman history, still 
failed utterly to comprehend the significance 
of this spiritual kingdom established by 
Christ on earth. He it was who ordered 
the first persecution in Gaul. In pursuance 
of his command, horrible tortures were in- 
flicted at Lyons upon those who would not 
abjure the new faith. 

A letter, written by an eye-witness, pic- 
tures with terrible vividness the scenes which 
followed. Many cases are described with 
harrowing detail, and of one Blandina it is 
said : " From morn till eve they put her to 
all manner of torture, marvelling that she 
still lived with her body pierced through and 
through and torn piecemeal by so many 
tortures of which a single one should have 
sufficed to kill her, to which she only replied, 
' I am a Christian. ' " 

The recital goes on to tell how she was 
then cast into a dungeon, — her feet com- 
pressed and dragged out to the utmost ten- 
sion of the muscles, — then left alone in dark- 
ness, until new methods of torture could be 
devised. 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 27 

Finally she was brought, with other Chris- 
tians, into the amphitheatre, hanging from 
a cross to which she was tied, and there 
thrown to the beasts. As the beasts refused 
to touch her she was taken back to the dun- 
geon to be reserved for another occasion, 
being brought out daily to witness the fate 
and suffering of her friends and fellow- 
martyrs ; still answering the oft-rej3eated 
question — "I am a Christian." 

The writer goes on to say, "After she had 
undergone fire, the talons of beasts, and 
every agony which could be thought of, she 
was wrapped in a network and thrown to a 
bull, who tossed her in the air" — and her 
sufferings were ended. 

Truly it cost something to say "I am a 
Christian" in those days. 

Marcus Aurelius probably gave orders for 
the persecution at Lyons, with little knowl- 
edge of what would be the nature of those 
persecutions, or of the religion he was trying 
to exterminate. Some of the hours spent 
in writing introspective essays would have 
been well employed in studying the period 
in which he lived, and the Empire he ruled. 



28 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

Paganism and Druidism, those twin mon- 
sters, receded before the advancing light of 
Christianity. Neither contained anything 
which could nourish the soul of man, and 
both had become simply badges of national- 
ity. 

Druidism was the last stronghold of in- 
dependent Gallic life. It was a mixture of 
northern myth and oriental dreams of me- 
tempsychosis, coarse, mystical, and cruel. 
The Roman paganism which was superim- 
posed by the conquering race was the mere 
shell of a once vital religion. Educated men 
had long ceased to believe in the gods and 
divinities of Greece, and it is said that the 
Roman augurs, while giving their solemn 
prophetic utterances, could not look at each 
other without laughing. 

In the year 312, alas for Christianity, it 
was espoused by imperial power. When the 
Emperor Constantino declared himself a 
Christian, there was no doubt rejoicing 
among the saints ; but it was the beginning 
of the degeneracy of the religion of Christ. 
The faith of the humble was to be raised to 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 2!) 

a throne; its lowly garb to be exchanged 
for purple and scarlet, the gospel of peace to 
be enforced by the sword. 

The Empire was crumbling, and upon its 
ruins the race of the future and social con- 
ditions of modern times were forming. 
Paganism and Druidism would have been an 
impossibility. Christianity even with its 
lustre dimmed, its purity tarnished, its sim- 
plicity overlaid with scholasticism, was bet- 
ter than these. The miracle had been ac- 
complished. The great Eoman Empire had 
said: "I am Christian." 



CHAPTER IV. 

Gaul had been Latinized and Christian- 
ized. Now one more thing was needed to 
prepare her for a great future. Her fibre 
was to be toughened by the infusion of a 
stronger race. JuHus Caesar had shaken her 
into submission, and Rome had chastised 
her into decency of behavior and speech, but 
as her manners improved her native vigor 
decHned. She took kindly to Roman luxury 
and effeminacy, and could no longer have 
thundered at the gates of her neighbors de- 
manding " land. " 

But at last the great Roman Empire was 
dying, and even degenerate Gaul was strug- 
gling out of her relaxing grasp. In her ex- 
tremity she called upon the Franks, a pow- 
erful Germanic race, to aid her. This people 
had long looked with covetous eyes at the 
fair fields stretching beyond the Rhine, and 
lost no time in accepting the invitation. 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 31 

They overspread the land, and Gaul and 
Koman alike were submerged beneath the 
Teuton flood, while the Frankish Con- 
queror, Clovis (son of the great Merova^us), 
was at Paris (or "Lutetia") wearing the 
kingly crown. 

Such was the beginning of independent 
and of dynastic life in France. 

Kome had found a more powerful ally 
than she hoped ; and the desire of Gaul was 
accomplished in that she was free from Rome. 
But the king of whom she had dreamed 
was of her own race ; not this terrible Frank. 
Had she exchanged one servitude for an- 
other? Had she been,' not set free, but sim- 
ply annexed to the realm of the Barbarian 
across the Rhine? Let us say rather that it 
was an espousal. She had brought her 
dowry of beauty and "land, "that most cov- 
eted of possessions, and had pledged obedi- 
ence, for which she was to be cherished, 
honored, and protected, and to bear the name 
of her lord. 

Ancient heroes are said to be seen through 
a shadowy lens, which magnifies their stat- 



32 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

ure. Let us hope that the crimes of the 
three or four generations immediately suc- 
ceeding Clovis have been in Hke manner 
expanded ; for it is sickening to read of such 
monstrous prodigality of wickedness. Whole 
families butchered, husbands, wives, chil- 
dren — anything obstructing the path to the 
throne — with an atrocity which makes Rich- 
ard III. seem a mere pigmy in the art of in- 
trigue and killing. The chapter closes with 
the daughter and mother of kings (Brune- 
hilde or Brunhaut) naked and tied by one 
arm, one leg and her hair to the tail of an 
unbroken horse, and amid jeers and shouts 
dashed over the stones of Paris (600 a.d.). 

But even the Frank succumbed to the ener- 
vating Gallic influence. The Merovingian 
line commenced by Clovis faded from ferocity 
into imbecility. Its Kings in less than two 
(Centuries had become mere lay-figures, wear- 
ing the symbols of an authority which ex- 
isted nowhere, unless in the Maire du Palais. 

This office from being a sort of royal stew- 
ardship had grown to be the governing power 
de facto. While Lothair, the Phantom 
King, was having his long locks dressed and 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 33 

perfumed, his 3Ia ire (In Palais, Charles, was 
mould iug and welding his kingdom, and at 
the same time staying the Mohammedan 
flood which was pouring over the Pyrenees ; 
and, hy his final and decisive blow in defence 
tf the Christianity espoused by Clovis, he 
earned the name of Charles Martel (the 
hammer). 

Less than one hundred years after the 
death of Clovis, there had come out of Asia, 
that birthplace of religions, a new faith, 
which was destined to be for centuries the 
scourge of Christendom, and which to-day 
rules one-third of the human family. Zoroas- 
ter, Buddha, Christ, had successively come 
with saving message to humanity, and now 
(600 A.D.) Mohammed believed himself 
divinely appointed to drive out of Arabia the 
idolatry of ancient Magianism (the religion 
of Zoroaster). 

Christianity had passed through strange 
vicissitudes. Kings, Emperors, Popes, and 
Bishops had been terrible custodians of its 
truths, and while many still held it in its 
primitive purity, ecclesiastics were fiercely 
fighting over the nature of the Trinity, the 



34r EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE. 

divinity of the Virgin Mother, and the 
Church was shaken to its foundation by fu- 
rious factions. 

In this hour of weakness, the Persians 
(590 A.D.) had conquered Asia Minor, Beth- 
lehem, Gethsemane, and Calvary were pro- 
faned ; the Holy Sepulchre had been burned, 
and the cross carried off amid shouts of 
laughter. Magianism had insulted Christi- 
anity, and no miracle had interposed ! The 
heavens did not roll asunder, nor did the 
earth open her abysses to swallow them up. 
There was consternation and doubt in Chris- 
tendom. 

Such was the state of the Church when 
Mohammedanism came into existence. 
" There is but one God, and Mohammed is 
his Prophet." Such was its battle-cry and 
its creed, and the moral precepts of the Ko- 
ran were its gospel. There seems nothing in 
this to account for the mad enthusiasm and 
the passion for worship in its followers. But 
in less than a hundred years this lion out of 
Arabia had subjected Syria, Mesopotamia, 
Egypt, Northern Africa, and the Spanish 
Peninsula. Now, sword in one hand, and 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 35 

the Koran in the other, the Mohammedan 
had crossed the Pyrenees and was in South- 
ern Gaul. 

Under the strange magic of this faith, 
the largest religious empire the world had 
known had sprung into existence, stretch- 
ing from the Chinese Wall to the Atlantic ; 
from the Caspian to the Indian Ocean; and 
Jerusalem, the metropolis of Christianity — 
Jerusalem, the Mecca of the Christian, was 
lost! The crescent floated over the birth- 
place of our Lord, and notwithstanding the 
temporary successes of the Crusades, it does 
to this day. 

If the Pyrenees were passed, the very 
existence of Christendom was threatened. 
Charles Martel, the grandfather of Charle- 
magne, averted this danger when he stayed 
the infidel flood at the battle of Tours, 732 

A.D. 

Pepin, the son of Charles Martel, who suc- 
ceeded him as Maire du Palais, does not 
seem to have had the temper or spirit of an 
usurper, but simply to have been an ener- 
getic, resolute man who was bored by the 
circumlocution of governing through a King 



36 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

who did not exist. He determined to put an 
end to the fiction, and to cut the Gordian 
knot by first cutting the long curls of the 
last Merovingian, Childeric; and then put- 
ting the crown upon his own head, he sent the 
unfortunate phantom of royalty to a mon- 
astery, to reflect upon the uncertainty of 
human pleasures and events. By right of 
manhood and superiority, the Carlovingian 
line had succeeded to the Merovingian. 

Against the dark background of European 
history, and with the broad level of obscur- 
ity stretching over the ages at its feet, there 
rises one shining pinnacle. Considered as 
man or sovereign, Charlemagne is one of 
the most impressive figures in history. His 
seven feet of stature clad in shining steel, 
his masterful grasp of the forces of his time, 
his splendid intelligence, instinct even then 
with the modern spirit, all combine to ele- 
vate him in solitary grandeur. 

Charlemagne found France in disorder 
measureless, and apparently insurmounta- 
ble. Barbarian invasion without, and an- 
archy within ; Saxon paganism pressing in 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRK. 37 

upon the North, and Asiatic Islamism upon 
the South and West ; a host of forces strug- 
ghng for dominion in a nation brutish, ig- 
norant, and without cohesion. 

It is the attribute of genius to discern op*t 
portunity where others see nothing. Charle-j 
magna saw rising out of this chaos a great 
resuscitated Roman empire, which should 
be at the same time a spiritual and Christian 
empire as well. Saxons, Slavs, Huns, 
Lombards, Arabs, came under his compell- 
ing grasp; these antagonistic races all held 
together by the force of one terrible will, in 
unnatural combination with France. No 
political liberties, no popular assemblies dis- 
cussing public measures ; it is Charlemagne 
alone who fills the picture; it is absolutism, 
— marked by prudence, ability, and gran- 
deur, but still, absolutism. 

The Pope looked approvingly upon this 
son of the Church by whose order 4,500 pa- 
gan heads could be cut off in one day, and 
a whole army compelled to baptism in an 
afternoon. Here was a champion to be pro- 
pitiated ! Charlemagne, on the other hand, 
saw in the Church the most compliant and 



38 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

effective means to empire. In the loving 
alliance formed, he was to be the protector, 
the Pope the protected. He wore the Church 
as a precious jewel in his crown. 

It was a splendid dream, splendidly real- 
ized ; the most imposing of human successes, 
and the most impressive of human failures. 
It seems designed as a lesson for the human 
race in the transitory nature o/ power ap- 
plied from without. 

The vast fabric passed with himself ; was 
gone like a shadow when he was gone. The 
unity of the Empire was buried in the grave 
of its founder. In twenty-nine years (by 
the treaty of Verdun) three kingdoms 
emerged from the crumbling mass. France, 
Italy, Germany, already separated by race 
repulsions, had taken up each a distinct na- 
tional existence, the Imperial crown re- 
maining with Germany. 

And France — France, the centre of this 
dream of unity, with her native incohesive- 
ness, and in the irony of fate, had broken into 
no less than 59 fragments, loosely held to- 
gether by one Carlovingian King. 



CHAPTER V. 

I THINK that it was Lincoln who said that 
" the Lord must like common people, because 
he had made so many of them." The path 
for the common people in France at this time 
led through heavy shadows. But a darker 
time was approaching. A system of oppres- 
sion was maturing, which was soon to en- 
velop them in the obscurity of darkest night. 

Those Scandinavian freebooters called 
Northmen, and later Normans, were the 
scourge of the kingdom. Nothing was safe 
from their insolent courage and rapacity. 

The rich could intrench themselves in stone 
fortresses, with moats and drawbridges, and 
be in comparative security, but the poor 
were utterly defenceless against this peren- 
nial destroyer. The result was a compact 
between the powerful and the weak, which 
was the beginning of the Feudal System. 



40 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

It was in effect an exchange of protection 
for service and fealty. You give us absolute 
control of your persons — your military ser- 
vice when required, and a portion of your 
substance and the fruit of your toil — and we 
will in exchange give you our fortified cas- 
tles as a refuge from the Northmen. Such 
was the offer. It was a choice between vas- 
salage, serfdom, or destruction outright. 

Simple enough in its beginnings, this be- 
came a ramified system of oppression, a cu- 
rious network of authority, ingeniously con- 
trolling an entire people. The conditions 
upon which was engrafted this compact were 
of great antiquity, had indeed been brought 
across the Rhine by their German conquer- 
ors; but the Northmen were the impelling 
cause of the swift development of feudalism 
in France. 

Charlemagne had felt grave apprehensions 
of evil from these robber incursions, but could 
not have conceived of a result such as this, 
the most oppressive system ever fastened 
upon a nation, and one which would at the 
same time sap the foundations of royalty it- 
self. 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 41 

The theory was that the King was absolute 
owner of all the territory ; the great lords 
holding their titles from him on condition 
of military service, their vassals pledging 
military service and obedience to them again 
on similar terms, and sub-vassals again to 
them repeating the pledge ; and so on in de- 
scending chain, until at last the serf, that 
wretched being whom none looks up to nor 
fears, is ground to powder beneath the su- 
perimposed mass. No appeal from the au- 
thority, no escape from the caprice or cruelty 
of his feudal lord. Could any scales weigh, 
could any words measure the suffering which 
must have been endured ? Is it strange, with 
every aspiration thwarted, hope stifled, that 
Europe sank into the long sleep of the Mid- 
dle Ages? 

It is easy to conceive that, under such a 
system, where all the affairs of the realm 
were adjusted by individual rulers with 
unlimited power, and where the great bar- 
ons could make war upon each other with- 
out authorization from the King, by the 
time this nominal head of the entire system 



4^ EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

was reached, there remained nothing for him 
to do. In fact, there was not left one vestige 
of kingly authority, and Carlovingian rulers 
were almost as insignificant as their Mero- 
vingian predecessors. France had, instead 
of one great sovereign, one hundred and fifty 
petty ones ! 

In 911 A.D. the Northmen were offered 
the province henceforth known as Nor- 
mandy, upon condition of their acceptance 
of the religion and submission to the laws 
of the realm. EoUo, the disreputable rob- 
ber-chief, took the oath of fealty to the King 
of France his Suzerain, and Christian bap- 
tism transformed him into respectable, law- 
abiding Robert, Duke of Normandy. 

With marvellous facility this people took 
on the language and manners of their neigh- 
bors, and in a century and a half were pre- 
pared to instruct the Britons in a higher 
civilization . 

I think it is one hundred years of respect- 
ability that is required by a certain aristo- 
cratic club for admission to its membership. 
The blood does not acquire the proper shade 
of azure until it has flowed in the full light 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 43 

of day for at least three generations. De- 
cidedly, William the Conqueror, first Nor- 
man King of England, could not have been 
admitted to this club. 

A century before his birth, his ancestors 
had lived by looting their neighbors. They 
were highwaymen, robbers, by profession. 
And, to increase his ineligibility, his mother, 
a pretty Norman peasant girl, daughter of a 
tanner, had ensnared the affections of that 
pleasant Duke of Normandy, known as 
"Robert the Devil." 

William, the fruit of this unconsecrated 
union, became in time Duke of Normandy. 
With that reversion to ancestral types to 
which scientists tell us we are all liable, he 
seems to have looked across the Channel 
toward England, with an awakening of his 
robber-instincts. In a few weeks, Harold, 
the last King of the Saxons, lay dead at his 
feet, and William, Duke of Normandy, was 
William I., King of England. 

Then was presented the curious anomaly 
of an English sovereign who was also ruler 
of a French province ; an English king who 
was vassal to the King of France. A door 



44 EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE. 

was thus opened (1066 A. d.) through which 
entered entangling comphcations and count- 
less woes in the future. 

If Charlemagne had worn the Church as a 
precious jewel in his crown in the ninth cen- 
tury, the Church now in the eleventh century 
wore all the European states, a tiara of jewels 
in her mitre. When Henry TV. prostrated 
himself barefooted before Gregory VII. at 
Canossa in 1072, the centre of dominion 
had passed from the Empire of Germany to 
Rome. 

The Church then was at its zenith. As a 
political system it was unrivalled ; but its tri- 
umphs brought little joy to the earnest 
souls still clinging to the ideals of primitive 
Christianity. But what availed it for Abe- 
lard to lead an intellectual revolt against 
corrupted beliefs in the North, or the Albi- 
igenses a spiritual one in the South? He 
was silenced and immured for life, while 
the unhappy inhabitants of Languedoc were 
massacred and almost exterminated, and an 
inquisition, established at Toulouse, made 
sure that heretical germs should not again 
spread from that infected centre. 



EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE. 45 

But however imperfect the religious senti- 
ment of the time, however it may have 
departed from the simple precepts of its 
founder, its power to sway the hearts and 
lives of the people may be judged from the 
'extraordinary movement started in France in 
the twelfth century. 

How inconceivable, in this practical age, 
that Europe should three times have emptied 
her choicest and best into Asia for a senti- 
ment ! Business suspended, private interests 
sacrificed or forgotten, life, treasure, all 
eagerly given — for what? That a small bit 
of territory, a thousand miles away, be torn 
from profaning infidels, because of its sacred 
associations, because it was the birthplace 
of a religion' whose meaning seems to have 
escaped them — a religion which they wore 
on their battle-flags, but not in their hearts. 
How would a barefooted, rope-girdled monk, 
however inspired and eloquent, fare to-day 
in New York, or London, or Paris? 

History has no stranger chapter than that 
of the Crusades. When Peter the Hermit 
pictured the desecration of the Holy Land 
by Mohammedans, all classes in France, 



46 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

from King to serf, were for the first time 
moved by a common sentiment, and poured 
life and treasure with passionate zeal into 
those streams which three times inundated 
Palestine. 

The order of Knights Templar had been 
created, and a splendid ideal of manhood 
held up before the French nation, and now 
the knightly ideal, side by side with the 
Christian and the romantic ideal, entered 
into the life of the people. Komance, song, 
poetry, eloquence came into being from a 
sort of spiritual baptism, and France began 
to wear the mantle of beauty which was to 
be her chief glory in the future. But future 
France was not clad in coat of mail in the 
twelfth century. She was lying helpless, be- 
neath the mass of feudal trappings. And 
for many centuries she was going to lie mute 
and helpless. But when that wise, cunning 
and unscrupulous King, Philip Augustus, 
brought the feudal barons into partial sub- 
jection to the Crown, and better still, when 
his heavenly-minded grandson, Louis IX., 
held up a new and shining ideal of mrtue, 
as higher than knightly qualities, and greater 
than kingship, then, the day was beginning 
to dawn. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Like all oppressive systems, feudalism bore 
within itself the seeds of its own destruction. 
When the King, shorn of prerogative and of 
dignity, made alliance with the people lying 
in helpless misery beneath the mailed sur- 
face, the system was rudely shaken. When 
artisans flocked to the free cities enjoying 
especial immunities and privileges from the 
King, and by skill and industry amassed 
fortunes, the commune and the bourgeoisie 
were created, and feudalism was stricken to 
its centre. When spendthrift nobles and 
needy barons mortgaged their estates to 
this thrifty but ignoble class, the end was 
not far off. And when in 1302 the ^'- tiers 
Hat''' entered the States-General as a legit- 
imate order of the Government, the very 



48 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

foundations were crumbling, and it need- 
ed but the final cowp de grace given by 
Charles VII. in the fifteenth century, when 
he established a standing army under the 
control of the King. When this was done, 
the feudal system had no longer an excuse 
for being. It existed thenceforth as a relio 
waiting to be dismantled by time. 

Fr.om the moment when a French province 
was attached to the crown of England, the 
dream of that nation was the conquest of 
France. Generations came and went, one 
dynasty replaced another, and still the 
struggle continued ; France sometimes seem- 
ing near to dominion over England, and 
England always believing it was her destiny 
to bring France under the rule of an English 
sovereign. 

A glamour of romance is thrown over 
the somewhat dreary pages of history 
by the royal marriages which occur in 
dazzling profusion. It seems to have been 
the custom, whenever a peace was con- 
cluded in Europe, to cement it with a royal 
marriage, and to throw in a princess as a 
sacrifice, — one of the conditions of almost 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 49 

every treaty being that a royal daughter, 
or sister, or niece, should be tossed across 
the Channel, or into Germany, or Italy, or 
Spain, an unwilling bride thrown into the 
arms of a reluctant bridegroom; with the 
result that in the succeeding generation 
there was a plentiful sprinkling of heirs with 
claims, more or less shadowy, to the neigh- 
boring thrones. This was the source, or 
rather pretext, for most of the wars be- 
tween France and England for four hundred 
years. 

In the early part of the fifteenth century 
the great crisis arrived. With that lack of 
unity which seemed a fatal Gallic inheri- 
tance, France broke into civil war, while an 
invading English army was in the heart of 
her kingdom. England's dream was near 
realization. 

An insane King, a vicious intriguing 
Queen-Regent, the Duke of Burgundy madly 
jealous of the Duke of Orleans, and both 
ready to sacrifice France in the rage of dis- 
appointed ambition, — such were the ele- 
ments. England's opportunity had come. 

The depraved Queen Isabella, acting for 



50 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

her insane husband, held conference with 
Henry V., and actually concluded a treaty 
bestowing the regency upon the English 
King. There was the usual douceur of a 
princess thrown in, and Katharine, the 
daughter of Isabella, and sister to the Dau- 
phin (the future King Charles VII.), was 
espoused by King Henry V. of England, who 
set up a royal court at Vincennes. 

The fortunes of the kingdom had never 
been so desperate. The people saw in these 
insolent traitorous dukes their natural 
enemy; in the King, their friend and pro- 
tector. Had not monarchy given them life 
and hope? It was to them sacred next to 
Heaven. They rose in an outburst of patri- 
otism. The young Dauphin was hastily and 
informally crowned, and thousands flocked to 
his standard. It was the King and the peo-/ 
pie against the great vassals, the last strug- 
gle of an expiring feudalism. Desperation 
lent fury to the conflict which was, upon 
both sides, a fight for existence; the Queen - 
mother in unnatural alliance with the Duke 
of Burgundy, who was resolved to rule or 
ruin. 



EVOLUTION OB" AN EMPIRE. 51 

He soon saw that defeat was inevitable, 
and, preferring infamy, threw himself into 
the hands of the English, offering to turn 
the kingdom over to the infant King Henry 
VI. (Henry V. having died). 

Charles abandoned hope; how could he 
struggle against such a combination? He 
was considering whether he should find 
refuge in Spain or in Scotland, when the 
tide of events was turned by the strangest 
romance in history. 

It must ever remain a mystery that a 
peasant girl, a child in years and in experi- 
ence, should have believed herself called to 
such a mission ; that conferring only with 
her heavenly guides or "voices," she should 
have sought the King, inspired him with 
faith in her, and in himself and his cause, re- 
animated the courage of the army, and led it 
herself to victory absolute and complete ; and 
then, have compelled the half-reluctant, half- 
doubting Charles to go with her to Rlieims, 
there to be anointed and consecrated ; this 
simple child in that day bestowing upon him 
a kingdom, and upon France a King I 



62 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

Was there ever a stranger chapter in 
history ! Alas, if it could have ended here, 
and she could have gone back to her 
mother and her spinning and her simple 
pleasures, as she was always longing to do 
when her work should be done. But no! 
we see her falling into the hands of the de- 
feated and revengeful English — this child, 
who had wrested from them a kingdom al- 
ready in their grasp. She was turned over 
to the French ecclesiastical court to be tried. 
A sorceress and a blasphemer they pro- 
nounce her, and pass her on to the secular 
authorities, and her sentence is — death. 

We see the poor defenceless girl, bewil- 
dered, terrified, wringing her hands and de- 
claring her innocence as she rides to execu- 
tion. God and man had abandoned her. No 
heavenly voice spoke, no miracle intervened 
as her young limbs were tied to the stake and 
the fagots and straw piled up about her. 
The torch was applied, and her pure soul 
mounted heavenward in a column of flames. 

Eugged men wept. A Burgundian gen- 
eral said, as he turned gloomily away, " We 
have murdered a saint." 



EVOLUTION OP AN EMPmE. 53 

And Charles, sitting upon tho throne she 
had rescued for him, what was he doing 
to save her? Nothing — to his everlasting 
shame be it said, nothing. He might not 
have succeeded ; the effort at rescue, or to 
stay the event, might have been unavailing. 
But where was his knighthood, where his 
manhood, that he did not try, or utter pas- 
sionate protest against her fate? 

Twenty-five years later we see him erect- 
ing statues to her memory, and " rehabilitat- 
ing" her desecrated name. And to-day, the 
Church which condemned her for blasphemy 
is placing her upon the calendar of saints. 
Charles VII. in creating a standing army, 
struck feudalism a deadly blow. Ilis son, 
Louis XL, with cold-blooded brutality fin- 
ished the work. This man's powerful and 
crafty intelligence saw in an alliance with the 
common people, a means of absorbing to him- 
self supreme power. Not since Tiberius had 
there been a more blood-thirsty monster on 
a throne. But he demolished the political 
structure of medievalism in his kingdom ; 
and when his cruel reign was ended, tlie Mid- 
dle Ages had passed away, and modern life 
had begun in France. 



CHAPTER VIL 

The early part of the sixteenth century 
must ever be memorable in the history of 
Europe. Ferdinand and Isabella had given 
to the human race a new world. Luther had 
hurled his defiance at Eome — had arraigned 
Leo X. for blasphemy and corrupt practices. 
Charles V., grandson of Ferdinand and 
Isabella (and nephew of Katherine, wife of 
Henry VIII.) was Emperor of Germany. 
Astute and powerful though he was, he had 
been unable to stay the Protestant flood. 
His empire, apparently hungering for the 
new heresy, was divided already into States 
Protestant and States Catholic. England 
was Protestant. The conversion of her 
King, because the Pope refused to annul his 
marriage with Katharine, was not one of 
the proudest triumphs of the new faith, but 
one of the most important. Had Katha- 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 55 

Fine's charms been fresher, or Anno Boleyn's 
less alluring, the course of history might 
have been strangely changed. Henry VIII. 
as persecutor of heretics would have found 
congenial occupation for his ferocious in- 
stincts, and Protestantism would have been 
long delayed. Spain was unchangeably Cath- 
olic, while France offered congenial soil for 
the new faith. The germs of heresy, long 
slumbering, were everywhere stirred into life. 

Francis I. was King ; sumptuous in tastes, 
suave and elegant in manners, as handsome 
as an Apollo, gay, pleasure-loving, as vicious 
as he was false, and if need be with a 
cruelty which matched his ambition, such 
was the man who held the destinies of 
France at this time. 

A rival claimant for the throne of Ger- 
many, he was destined to spend his life in 
fruitless contest with the more able, wily, 
and astute Charles V. , the possession of that 
Empire the ignis-fatuus ever luring him on ; 
an end to which all other ends were simply 
the means. The religious question upon 
which Europe was divided meant nothing to 
him, except as he could use it in his duel 



56 EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE. 

with the Emperor. He was in turn the ally 
of Henry VIII. or the willing tool of Charles 
V. If he needed the English King's friend- 
ship, the Protestants had protection. If he 
desired to placate Charles V. , the roastings 
and torturings commenced again. 

In 1547 Francis and Henry VIII. each 
went to his reward, and a few years later 
Charles V. had laid down his crown and 
carried his weary, unsatisfied heart to St. 
Yuste. The brilliant pageant was over; 
but Protestantism was expanding. 

The question at issue was deeper than 
any one knew. Neither Luther nor Leo X. 
understood the revolution they had precipi- 
tated. Protestants and Papists alike failed 
to comprehend the true nature of the strug- 
gle, which was not for supremacy of Roman- 
ist or Protestant; not whether this dogma 
or that was true, and should prevail; but 
an assertion of the right of every human 
soul to choose its own faith and form of 
worship. The great battle for human lib- 
erty had commenced; the struggle for 
religious liberty was but the prelude to what 
was to follow. There was abundant proof 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 57 

later that Protestants no less than Papists 
needed only opportunity and power to be as 
cruel and intolerant as their persecutors had 
been. Before the Reformation was fifty 
years old, Servetus, one of the greatest men 
of his age, a scholar, philosopher, and man 
of irreproachable character, was burned at 
Geneva for heretical views concerning the 
natui'e of the Trinity ; Calvin, the great 
organizer of Protestant theology giving, if 
not the order for this odious crime, at least 
the nod of approval for its cwnmission. 

Huguenot, that name of tragic associa- 
tion, was a corruption of the German Eid- 
genossen — meaning associates. By the way 
of Switzerland it came into France as Egue- 
nots, and the transition to its present form 
was simple. The Huguenots were no longer 
a timorous band hiding in darkness as in the 
time of Francis I. A party with such lead- 
ers as Anthony de Bourbon, Prince of Conde 
(his brother), and xVdmiral Coligny, was not 
to be put down by a few roastings and 
stranglings here and there. Anthony de 
Bourbon (King of Navarre) was next in 



58 EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE. 

succession should the House of Valois be- 
come extinct, with a young son valiant as 
himself (the future Henry IV.) pressing on 
toward manhood. 

Catholic France needed plenty of comfort 
from Rome and Madrid in dealing with this 
formidable body of heretics which had fast- 
ened upon her vitals, and which was in turn 
receiving aid and comfort from the young 
Protestant Queen across the Channel. 

When that fair princess Catharine de' 
Medici became the wife of Henry, second 
son of Francis I., no one suspected the tre- 
mendous import of the event. Powerless to 
win the affection or even confidence of her 
husband, she remained during his reign 
almost unobserved, but, as the event proved, 
not unobservant. Her alert faculties were 
not idle, and when upon the death of Henry 
II. she found herself Queen-Regent, with 
only a frail boy of sixteen to obstruct her 
will, she quickly gathered the threads she 
already knew so well, and her supple hand 
closed upon them with a grasp not to be 
relinquished while she lived. 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 59 

Another young Princess liad been tossed 
across the Channel. Tliis time it was her 
most serene little highness, Marie Stuart, 
Queen of Scotland, intended for the dauphin, 
who was to be Francis II. 

In order to be prepared for this high des- 
tiny, the little maid was brought when only 
six years old to the Court of France to be 
trained under the direct supervision of her 
future mother-in-law, Catharine de' Medici. 
Poor little Mary Stuart — predestined to sin 
and to tragedy ! Could any woman be good, 
with the blood of the Guises in her veins, and 
with Catharine de' Medici as preceptress ? 

This marriage was planned before Catha- 
rine's advent to power, or it would never 
have been. Mary was the niece of the Duke 
of Guise, and the central thought of Catha- 
rine's policy was the exclusion of this am- 
bitious, intriguing family from every avenue 
to power in the state. Now, Mary would 
be Queen, and who so natural advisers as 
her uncles of the house of Lorraine ? 

The marriage of the two children had 
taken place — the sickly boy with only a mod- 
est portion of intelligence was Francis II. 



60 EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE. 

Mary, his Queen, whom he adored, controlled 
him utterly, and was in turn controlled by 
her uncles, the Guises. The wily Catharine 
saw herself defeated by a beautiful girl of 
sixteen. 

The family of Guise was the self-appointed 
head of the Catholic party in France and 
represented the most extreme views regard- 
ing the treatment of heretics. So the 
strange result was, that Catharine, if she 
looked for any allies in her fight with the 
house of Lorraine, of which the Duke of 
Guise was the head, must make common 
cause with the Protestants, whom she hated 
a little less than she did the uncles of Mary 
Stuart. But events were soon to change the 
situation. Did she hasten them? Such a 
suspicion may never have existed. But may 
one not suspect anything of a woman capa- 
ble of a St. Bartholomew? 

Francis II. was dead. Mary Stuart had 
passed out of French history. The fates 
were fighting on the side of Catharine, who 
wasted no regrets upon the death of a son, 
which made her Queen -Eegent during the 
minority of her second son Charles. She 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 61 

entered upon her fight with the Guises with 
renewed energy, and hecame to some extent 
protector of the Protestants. Realizing that 
her time was brief, she prepared Charles for 
the position he would soon hold. 

What can be said of a mother who seeks 
to exterminate every germ of truth or virtue 
in her son — who immerses him in degrading 
vices in order to deaden his too sensitive 
conscience and make him a willing tool for 
her purposes? Inheriting the splendid in- 
telligence as well as genius for statecraft 
of the Medici, nourished from her infancy 
upon Machiavellian principles, cold and cruel 
by nature, this Florentine woman has writ- 
ten her name in blood across the pages of 
French history. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

There is not time to tell the story of the 
events leading up to that fateful night, 
August 24, 1572. Impelled always by her 
fear and dread of the Guises, Catharine had 
been vacillating in her policy with the Hu- 
guenots. Charles IX. was now King: im- 
pressible, easily influenced, yet stubborn, 
intractable, incoherent, passionate, and un- 
reliable ; sometimes inclining to the Guises, 
sometimes to Coligny and the Huguenots, 
and always submitting at last after vain 
struggle to his imperious mother's will, in 
her efforts to free him from both. We see 
in him a weak character, not naturally bad, 
torn to distraction by the cruel forces about 
him, who when compelled to yield, as he 
always did in the end, to that terrible wo- 
man, would give way to fits of impotent 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 63 

rage against the fate which allowed him no 
peace. 

A time arrived when Catharine feared the 
influence of the Protestant Coligny more 
than the Guises. Brave, patriotic, magnetic, 
he had succeeded in winning Charles' con- 
sent to declare war against Spain. Philip 
TI. of Spain was Catharine's son-in-law and 
closest ally. Her entire policy would be 
undermined. At all hazards Coligny must 
be gotten rid of. The young King of Na- 
varre, adored leader of the Protestants, was 
a constant menace ; he too must in some way 
be disposed of. 

There were sinister conferences with Philip 
of Spain and with his Minister, that incar- 
nation of cruelty and of the Inquisition, the 
Duke of Alva. 

God knows France was not guiltless in 
what followed; but the initiative, the in- 
ception of the horrid deed, was not French. 
It was conceived in the brain of either this 
Italian woman or her Spanish adviser and 
co-con jpirator, tlie Duke of Alva. We shall 
never know the inside liistor}- of the massa- 
cre of St. Bartholomew. It must ever i-e- 



64 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

main a matter of conjecture just how and 
when it was planned, but the probabilities 
point strongly one way. 

Charles was to be gradually prepared for 
it by his mother. By working upon his 
fears, his suspicions, by stories of plottinga 
against his life and his kingdom, she was 
to infuriate him ; and then, while his rage 
was at its height, the opportunity for 
action must be at hand. The marriage of 
Charles' sister Margaret with the young 
Protestant leader Henry of Navarre, with 
its promise of future protection to the Hu- 
guenots, was part of the plot. It would lure 
all the leaders of the cause to Paris. Co- 
ligny, Conde, all the heads of the party 
were urgently invited to attend the marriage- 
feast which was to inaugurate an era of 
peace. 

Admiral Coligny was requested by Catha- 
rine, simply as a measure of protection to 
the Protestants, to have an additional regi- 
ment of guards in Paris, to act in case of 
any unforeseen violence. 

Two days after the marriage and while 
the festivities were at their height, an at- 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. C5 

tempt upon the life of the old Admiral 
awoke suspicion and alarm. But Catharine 
and her son went immediately in person to 
see the wounded old man, and to express 
their grief and horror at the event. They 
commanded that a careful list of the names 
and abode of every Protestant in Paris be 
made, in order, as they said, " to take them 
under their own immediate protection." 
"My dear father," said the King, "the hurt 
is yours, the grief is mine." 

At that moment, the knives were already 
sharpened, every man instructed in his part 
in the hideous drama, and the signal for its 
commencement determined upon. Charles 
did not know it, but his mother did. She 
went to her son's room that night, artfully 
and eloquently pictured the danger he was 
in, confessed to him that she had authorized 
the attempt upon Coligny, but that it was 
done because of the Admiral's plottings 
against him, which she had discovered. But 
the Guises — her enemies and his — they 
knew it, and would denounce her and the 
King! The onl)'' thing now is to finish the 
work. He must die. 



66 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

Charles was in frightful agitation and 
stubbornly refused. Finally with an air of 
offended dignity she bowed coldly and said 
to her son, " Sir, will you permit me to with- 
draw with my daughter from your king- 
dom?" The wretched Charles was con- 
quered. In a sort of insane fury he 
exclaimed, " Well, let them kill him, and all 
the rest of the Huguenots too. See that not 
one remains to reproach me." 

This was more than she had hoped. All 
was easy now. So eager was she to give the 
order before a change of mood, that she flew 
herself to give the signal, fully two hours 
earlier than was expected. At midnight 
the tocsin rang out upon the night, and the 
horror began. 

Lulled to a feeling of security by artfully 
contrived circumstances, husbands, wives, 
sons, daughters, peacefully sleeping, were 
awakened to see each other hideously slaugh- 
tered. 

The stars have looked down upon some 
terrible scenes in Paris, her stones are not 
unacquainted with the taste of human blood, 
but never had there been anything like this. 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 67 

The carnage of battle is merciful compared 
with it. Shrieking women and children, 
half-clothed, fleeing from knives already 
dripping with human blood; frantic mothers 
shielding the bodies of their children, and 
wives pleading for the lives of husbands; 
the living hiding beneath the bodies of the 
dead. 

The cry that ascended to Heaven from 
Paris that night was the most awful and 
despairing in the world's history. It was 
centuries of cruelty crowded into a few 
hours. 

The number slain can never be accurately 
stated ; but it was thousands. Human blood 
is intoxicating. An orgie set in which 
laughed at orders to cease. Seven days it 
continued and then died out for lack of 
material. The provinces had caught the 
contagion, and orders to slay were received 
and obeyed in all except two, the Gov- 
ernor of Bayonne, to his honor be it told, 
writing to the King in reply: "Your Maj- 
esty has many faithful subjects in Bayonne, 
but not one executioner." 

And where was " His Majesty" while this 



68 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

work was being done ? How was it with 
Catharine ? She was possibly seeing to the 
embalming of Coligny' s head, which we are 
told she sent as a present to the Pope. 
We hear of no regrets, no misgivings, that 
she was calm, collected, suave and un- 
fathomable as ever, but that Charles in a 
strange, half-frenzied state was amusing 
himself by firing from the windows of the 
palace at the fleeing Huguenots. Had he 
killed himself in remorse, would it not have 
been better, instead of lingering two 
wretched years, a prey to mental tortures 
and an inscrutable malady, before he died? 

Europe was shocked. Christendom averted 
her face in horror. But at Madrid and 
Rome there was satisfaction. 

Catharine and the Duke of Alva had done 
their work skilfully, but the result surprised 
and disappointed them. Tens of thousands 
of Huguenots were slain, which was well; 
but many times that number remained, with 
spirit unbroken, which was not well. 

They had been too merciful ! Why had 
Henry of Navarre been spared? Had not 
Alva said, " Take the big fish and let the 



EVOLUTION 01'^ AN EMPIRE. fit) 

small fry go. One salmon is worth more 
than a thousand frogs." 

But Charles considered the matter settled 
when he uttered those swelling words to 
Henry of Navarre the day after the massa- 
cre : "I mean in future to have one religion 
in my kingdom. It is mass or death." 

Catharine's third son now wore the crown 
of France. In Henry III. she had as pliant 
an instrument for her will as in the two 
brothers preceding him; and, like them, his 
reign was spent in alternating conflict with 
the Protestants and the Duke de Guise. At 
last, wearied and exasperated, this half -Ital- 
ian and altogether conscienceless King 
quite naturally thought of the stiletto. The 
old Duke, as he entered the King's apart- 
ment by invitation, was stricken down by 
assassins hidden for that purpose. 

Henry had not counted on the rebound 
from that l^low. Catholic France was excited 
to such popular fury against him that he 
threw himself into the arms of the Protes- 
tants, imploring their aid in keeping his 
crown and his kingdom ; and when himself 



To EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE. 

assassinated, a year later, in the absence of 
a son he named Henry, King of Navarre, his 
successor. A Protestant and a Huguenot 
was King of France. 



CHAPTER IX. 

After long wandering in strange seas, 
we come in view of familiar lights and 
headlands. With the advent of the house 
of Bourbon, we have grasped a thread which 
leads directly down to our own time. 

The accession of a Protestant King was 
hailed with delirious joy by the Huguenots, 
and with corresponding rage by Catholic 
France. The one looked forward to redress- 
ing of wrongs and avenging of injuries; and 
the other flatly refused submission unless 
Henry should recant his heresy, and be- 
come a convert to the true faith. 

The new King saw there was no bed of 
roses preparing for him. After four years 
of effort to reconcile the irreconcilable, he 
decided upon his course. He was not called 
to the throne to rule over Protestant France, 



72 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

nor to be an instrument of vengeance for 
the Huguenots. He saw that the highest 
good of the kingdom required, not that he 
should impose upon it either form of behef 
or worship, but give equal opportunity andf 
privilege to both. 

To the consternation of the Huguenots he 
announced himself ready to listen to the 
arguments in favor of the religion of Eome ; 
and it took just five hours of deliberation to 
convince him of its truth. He announced 
himself ready to abjure his old faith. Bit- 
ter reproaches on the one side and rejoic- 
ings on the other greeted this decision. It 
was not heroic. But many even among the 
Protestants acknowledged it to be an act of 
supreme political wisdom. 

Peace was restored, and the *' Edict of 
Nantes," which quickly followed, proved to. 
his old friends, the Huguenots, that they 
were not forgotten. The Protestants, with 
disabilities removed, shared equal privileges 
with the Catholics throughout the kingdom ; 
and the first victory for religious liberty was 
splendidly won. 

An era of unexampled prosperity dawned. 



EVOLUTION" OF AN EMPIRE. 73 

Never had the kingdom been so wisely and 
beneficently governed. Sincerity, simplic- 
ity, and sympathy had taken the place of 
dissimulation, craft, and cruelty. Uplifting 
agencies were everywhere at work, reaching 
even to the peasantry, that forgotten ele- 
ment in the nation. 

The reign of the Bourbon dynasty had 
opened auspiciously. Henry IV. was the 
idol of the people. His loveless ' marriage 
with Margaret de Valois had been annulled, 
and he had espoused Maria de' Medici. The 
blood from that poisoned stream was again 
to be intermingled with the blood of the 
future Kings of France. 

After a reign of twenty-one years, the saga- 
cious ruler who had done more than any 
other to make the country great and happy 
was stricken down by the hand of an assas- 
sin, and a cry of grief arose alike from Cath- 
olic and Protestant throughout the kingdom. 

Poor France was again at the mercy of a 
woman with the corrupt instincts of the 
Medici. The widow of Henry IV., who was 
Regent during the infancy of her son Louis, 



T4: EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

was intriguing, vulgar, and without the 
abiHty of the great Catharine. The king- 
dom was rent by cabals of aspiring favorites 
and ambitious nobles, until the reign of 
Louis XIII. , or rather of Cardinal Eichelieu, 
began. 

The foundations of this man's policy lay 
deep, out of sight of all save his own far- 
reaching intelligence. Pitiless as an ice- 
berg, he crushed every obstacle to his pur- 
pose. Impartial as fate, with no loves, no 
hatreds. Catholics, Protestants, nobles. Par- 
liaments, one after another were borne down 
before his determination to make the King, 
what he had not been since Charlemagne, 
supreme in France. 

The will of the great minister mowed 
down like a scythe. The power of the gran- 
dees, that last remnant of feudalism, and a 
perpetual menace to monarchy, was swept 
away. One great noble after another was 
humiliated and shorn of his privileges, if 
not of his head. 

The Huguenots, being first shaken into 
submission, saw their political liberties torn 
from them by the stroke of a pen, and even 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 75 

while the Catholics were making merry over 
this discomfiture, the minister was planning 
to send Henrietta, sister of the King, across 
the Channel to become Queen of Protestant 
England, as wife of Charles I. But the 
act of supreme audacity was to come. This 
high prelate of the church, this cardinal 
minister, formed alliance with Gustavus 
Adolphus, the great leader of the Protes- 
tants in the war upon the Emperor and the 
Pope! 

He allowed no religion, no class, to sway 
or to hold him. He was for France; and 
her greatness and glory augmented under 
his ruthless dominion. By his extraordinary 
genius he made the reign of a commonplace 
King one of dazzling splendor; and while 
gratifying his own colossal ambition he so 
strengthened the foundations of the mon- 
archy that princes of the blood themselves 
could not shake it. 

It was great — it was dazzling, but of all 
his work there is but one thing which revo- 
lutions and time have not swept away. The 
"French Academy" alone survives as his 
monument. Out of a gathering of literary 



76 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

friends lie created a national institution, its 
object the establishing a court of last appeal 
in all that makes for eloquence in speaking 
or writing the French language. In a coun- 
try where few things endure this has re- 
mained unchanged for two hundred and 
thirty years. 

But this master of statecraft, this creator 
of despotic monarchy, had one unsatisfied 
ambition. He would have exchanged all 
his honors for the ability to write one play 
like those of Corneille. Hungering for liter- 
ary distinction, he could not have gotten into 
his own Academy had he not created it. 
And jealous of his laurels, he hated Cor- 
neille as much as he did the enemies of 
France. 



CHAPTER X. 

Again do we recognize the fine Italian 
hand in French pohtics. Cardinal Mazarin 
was Minister during the regency of Anne of 
Austria, directing and controlling the affairs 
of the Kingdom, less intent upon the great- 
ness of France than the greatness and mag- 
nificence of her Prime Minister. At last 
the wily Italian was gone, and Louis XIV. 
settled himself upon the throne which Rich- 
elieu had rendered so exalted and immovable. 

Cardinal Mazarin had said of the young 
Louis that "there was enough in him to 
make four Kings, and one honest man." 
His greatness consisted more in amplitude 
than in kind. Nature made him in prodigal 
mood. He was an average man of colossal 
proportions. His ability, courage, dignity, 
industry, greed for power and possessions, 
were all on a magnificent scale, and so were 



78 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

his vanity, his loves, his cruelties, his pleas- 
ures, his triumphs, and his disappointments. 

No King more wickedly oppressed France, 
and none made her more glorious. He 
made her feared abroad and magnificent at 
home, but he desolated her, and drained her 
resources with ambitious wars. He crowned 
her with imperishable laurels in literature, 
art, and every manifestation of genius, but 
he signed the " Revocation of the Edict of 
Nantes," and drove out of his kingdom 
500,000 of the best of his subjects. 

If the names of Marlborough and Main- 
tenon could have been stricken out of his life, 
the story might have had a different ending. 
From the moment the great Duke checked 
his victorious army, his sun began to go 
down; but it was Maintenon who most 
obscured its setting. 

His unloved Queen, the Spanish Marie 
Therese, had borne his mad infatuation for 
Louise la Valliere ; la Valliere had carried 
her broken heart to a convent, and been 
superseded by de Montespan, and de Mon- 
tespan had invited her own destruction by 
bringing into her household Madame de 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMriRE. 79 

Maintenon, thepions widow of the poet Scar- 
ron, in order tliat the austere virtues of that 
lady might be engrafted upon the children 
of the royal houseliold. Grave, ambitious, 
talented, the governess of de Montespan's 
children was not too much absorbed in her 
duties to find ways of establishing an in- 
fluence over the King. 

This man who had absorbed into himself 
all the functions of the Government, who 
was Ministers, Magistrates, Parliaments, all 
in one, this central sun of whom Corneille, 
Moliere, Racine were but single rays, was 
destined to be enslaved in bis old age by a 
designing adventuress; her will his law. 
The hey-day of youth having passed, he 
was beginning to be anxious about his soul. 
She artfully pricked his conscience, and de 
Montespan was sent away, but de Maintenon 
remained. 

She next convinced him that the only fit- 
ting atonement for his sins was to drive 
heresy out of his kingdom, and re-establish 
the true faith. At her bidding he undid 
the glorious work of Henry IV., signed the 
"Revocation of the Edict of Nantes," and 
brutally stamped out Protestantism. 



80 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

A part of the scheme of penitence seems 
to have been that on the death of poor Marie 
Therese, he should make her (de Maintenon) 
his lawful wife, which he did privately ; and 
his sun went down obscured by crushing 
•griefs and disappointments. His children 
swept away, the prestige of success tar- 
nished, this demigod was taken to pieces by 
time's destroying fingers, quite as uncere- 
moniously as are the rest of us, hiding 
finally behind the bed-curtains while a 
kneeling courtier passed to him his wig on 
the end of a stick, and at last lying down 
like any other old dying sinner, overwhelmed 
with the vanity of earthly things and with 
the vastness of eternity. 

Still more would the dying moments of 
the Grand Monarque have been embittered 
could he have foreseen into what hands his 
great inheritance was passing. 

Upon Louis XV. more than any other 
rests the responsibility of the crisis which 
was approaching. 

A heartless sybarite, depraved in tastes, 
without sense of responsibility or compre- 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 81 

hension of his times, a brutalized voluptuary 
governed by a succession of designing wo- 
men, regardless of national i)Overty, indulg- 
ing in wildest extravagance, — such was the 
man in whom was vested the authority ren- 
dered SO absolute by Richelieu, — such the 
man who opened up a pathway for the 
storm. 

As for the nobility, their degradation may 
be imagined when it is said there was as 
bitter rivalry between titled and illustrious 
fathers to secure for their daughters the 
coveted position held by Madame do Pompa- 
dour, as for the highest offices of State. 

Could the upper ranks fall lower than 
this? Had not the kingdom reached its 
lowest depths, where its foreign policy was 
determined by the amount of consideration 
shown to Madame de Pompadour? But this 
woman, whose friendship was artfully sought 
by the great Empress Maria Theresa, was 
superseded, and the fresher charms of Ma- 
dame du Barri enslaved the King. The 
deposed favorite could not survive her fall, 
and died of a broken heart. It is said that 
as Louis, looking from an upper window of 



82 EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE. 

his palace, saw the coffin borne out in a 
drenching rain, he smiled and said: "Ah, 
the Marquise has a bad day for her journey." 
It may be imagined that the man who could 
be so pitiless to the woman he had loved 
would feel little pity for the people whom> 
he had not loved, but whom he knew only 
as a remote, obscure something, which held 
up the weight of his glory. 

But this " obscure something" was under- 
going strange transformation. The greater 
light at the surface had sent some glimmer- 
ing rays down into the mass below, which 
began to awaken and to think. Misery, 
hopeless and abject, was changing into 
rage and thirst for vengeance. 

A new class had come into existence 
which was not noble, but with highly trained 
intelligence it looked with contemjDt and 
loathing upon the frivolous, half-educated 
nobles. Scorn was added to the ferment of 
human passions beneath the surface, and 
when Voltaire had spoken, and the re- 
straints of religion were loosened, no living 
hand, not that of a Richelieu nor a Louis 
XIV., could have averted the coming doom. 



EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE. 83 

But — no one seems to have suspected what 
was a]iproaching. 

A wonderful literature had come into ex- 
istence — not stately and classic as in the 
age preceding,— but instinct with a new 
sort of life. The profoundest themes which 
can occupy the mind of man were handled 
with marvellous lightness of touch and 
clothed with prismatic brilliancy of speech ; 
but all was negation. Xone tried to build ; 
all to demolish. The black-winged angel of 
Destruction was hovering over the land. 

Then Rousseau tossed his dreamy ab- 
stractions into the quivering air, and the 
formula, "Liberty, Equality, and Frater- 
nity," was caught up by the titled aristocracy 
as a charming idyllic toy, while Princes, 
Dukes, and Marquises amused themselves 
^with a dream of Arcadian simplicity, to be 
attained in some indefinite way in some 
remote and equally indefinite future. It 
was all a masquerade. No reality, no sin- 
cerity, no convictions, good or evil. The 
only thing that was real was that an over- 
taxed, impoverished people was exasperated 
and — hungry. 



84 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

Did the King need new supplies for his 
unimaginable luxuries, they were taxed. 
Was it necessary to have new accessions to 
French " glory, " in order to allay popular 
clamor or discontent, they must supply the 
men to fight the glorious battles, and the 
means with which to pay them. Every 
burden fell at last upon this lowest stratum 
of the State, the nobility and clergy, while 
owning two-thirds of the land, being nearly 
exempt from taxation. 

And yet the King and nobility of France, 
in love with Eousseau's theories, were airily 
discussing the "rights of man." Wolves 
and foxes coming together to talk over the 
sacredness of the rights of property — or the 
occupants of murderers' row growing elo- 
quent over the sanctity of human life ! How 
incomprehensible that among those quick- 
witted Frenchmen there seems not one to 
have realized that the logical sequence of 
the formula, "Liberty, Equality, and Fra- 
ternity," must be, " Down with the Aris- 
tocrats ! " 

And so the surface which Richelieu had 
converted into adamant grew thinner and 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 85 

thinner each day, until King and Court 
danced upon a mere gilded crust, uncon- 
scious of the abysmal fires beneath. Some 
of those powdered heads fell into the execu- 
tioner's basket twenty -five years later. Did 
they recall this time? Did Madame du 
Barri think of it, did she exult at her tri- 
umph over de Pompadour, when she was 
dragged shrieking and struggling to the 
guillotine? 

And while France was thus weaving her 
future, what were the other nations doing? 
England, sane, practical, with little time 
for abstractions, and little said about 
"glory," was importing turnii^s, converting 
agriculture into a science, and under the 
instruction of exiled Huguenots, establish- 
ing marvellous industries. In the new 
kingdom of Prussia, a half-savage, half- 
inspired King had been importing artisans 
and skill of all sorts, reclaiming waste lands. 
Living like a miser, he had indulged in but 
one luxury : an army, which should be the 
best in the world. There was no powder, 
no patches at his Court ; where he thrashed 



86 EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE. 

with his own royal hands male and female 
courtiers, starved, imprisoned, and cudgelled 
his son and heir to his throne for playing on 
the violin; and, it is said, so terrified and 
scarified his grenadiers with canes and cats 
that not one of them would not have pre- 
ferred facing the enemy to meeting his en- 
raged sovereign, had he done wrong, 

Frederick was not a pleasant barbarian. 
But there is at least a ring of sincerity about 
all this, which it is refreshing to recall after 
the tinsel and depraved refinements of 
France under Louis XV. , and something too 
which gives promise, in spite of its brutality, 
of a stalwart future. 

Five years before the close of this miser- 
able reign, an event occurred seemingly of 
small importance to Europe. A child was 
born in an obscure Italian household. His 
name was Napoleon Bonaparte. His birth- 
place, the island of Corsica, had only two 
months before been incorporated with France. 
The fates even then were watching over this 
child of destiny who might, by a slight turn 
of events, then imminent, have been born a 
subject of George III. of England. 



CHAPTER XL 

Louis XV. was dead, and two children, 
with the Hght-heartedness of youth and in- 
experience, stepped upon the throne which 
was to be a scaffold — Louis XVL, only- 
twenty, and Marie Antoinette, his wife, 
nineteen. He, amiable, kind, full of gener- 
ous intentions ; she, beautiful, simple, child- 
like and lovely. Instead of a debauched old 
King with depraved surroundings, here were 
a Prince and Princess out of a fairy-tale. 
The air was filled with indefinite promise of 
a new era for mankind to be inaugurated 
by this amiable young king, whose kindness 
of heart shone forth in his first speech, 
'' We will have no more loans, no credit, no 
fresh burdens on the people;" then, leaving 
his ministers to devise ways of paying the 
enormous salaries of officials out of an 
empty treasury, and to arrange the financial 



88 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

details of his benevolent scheme of govern- 
ment, he proceeded with his gay and bril- 
liant young wife to Rheims, there to be 
crowned with a magnificence undreamed of 
by Louis XIV. 

In the midst of these rejoicings over the 
new reign, and of speculative dreams of 
universal freedom, there was wafted across 
the Atlantic news of a handful of patriots 
arrayed against the tyranny of the British 
Crown. Here were the theories of the new 
philosophy translated into the reality of 
actual experience. "No taxation without 
representation," "No privileged class," "No 
government without the consent of the gov- 
erned." Was this not an embodiment of 
their dreams? Nor did it detract from the 
interest in the conflict that England — Eng- 
land, the hated rival of France, was defied 
by an indignant people of her own race. 
There was not a young noble in the land 
who would not have rushed if he could to 
the defence of the outraged colonies. 

The King, half doubting, and vaguely 
fearing, was swept into the current, and the 
armies and the courage of the Americans 



EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE. 89 

were splendidly reinforced by generous, en- 
thusiastic France. 

Why should the simple-hearted Louis see 
what no one else seemed to see : that victory 
or failure were alike full of peril for France? 
If the colonies were conquered, France would 
feel the vengeance of England ; if they were 
freed and self-governing, the principle of 
Monarchy had a staggering blow. 

In the mean time, as the American Eevo- 
lution moved on toward success, there was 
talk in the cabin as well as the chateau of 
the "rights of man." In shops and barns, 
as well as in clubs and drawing-rooms, there 
was a glimmering of the coming day. 

"What is true upon one continent is 
true upon another," say they. "If it is 
cowardly to submit to tyranny in America, 
what is it in France ?" " If Englishmen may 
revolt against oppression, why may not 
Frenchmen?" "No government without 
the consent of the governed, eh? When 
has our consent been asked, the consent of 
twenty-five million people? Are we sheep, 
that we have let a few thousands govern us 
for a thousand years, ivithout our consent?" 



90 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

Poverty and hunger gave force and ur- 
gency to these questions. The people hegan 
to clamor more boldly for the good time 
which had been promised by the kind-hearted 
King, The murmur swelled to an ominous 
roar. Thousands were at his very palace 
gates, telling him in no unmistakable 
terms that they were tired of smooth words 
and fair promises. What they wanted was 
a new constitution and — bread. 

Poor Louis ! the one could be made with 
pen and paper ; but by what miracle could 
he produce the other? How gladly would 
he have given them anything. But what 
could he do? There was not enough money 
to pay the salaries of his officials, nor for 
his gay young Queen's fetes and balls! The 
old way would have been to impose new 
taxes. But how could he tax a people cry- 
ing at his gates for bread? He made more 
promises which he could not keep; yielded, 
one after another, concessions of authority 
and dignity; then vacillated, and tried to 
return over the slippery path, only to be 
dragged on again by an irresistible fate. 

When Louis XVI. convoked the States- 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 91 

General, he made his last concession to the 
demands of his subjects. 

That almost -forgotten body had not been 
Been since Richelieu effaced all the auxiliary 
functions of government. Nobles, ecclesi- 
astics, and tiers etat (or commons) found 
themselves face to face once more. The 
handsome contemptuous nobles, the princely 
ecclesiastics were unchanged — but there was 
a new expression in the pale faces of the 
commons. There was a look of calm defi- 
ance as they met the disdainful gaze of the 
aristocrats across the gulf of two centuries. 

The two superior bodies absolutely refused 
to sit in the same room with the commons. 
They might under the same roof, but in the 
same room — never. 

No outburst met this insult. With mar- 
vellous self-control and dignity, and with an 
ominous calm, the commons constituted 
themselves into the "National Assembly." 

Aristocratic France had committed its 
concluding act of arrogance and folly. And 
when poor distracted Louis gave impotent 
order for the Assembly to disperse, he com- 
mitted suicide. Louis the man lived on to 



92 EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE. 

be slain by the people three years later, but 
Louis the King died at that moment. 

When the Assembly defied his authority 
and continued to solemnly act as if he had 
not spoken, the power had passed to the 
people. They were sovereign. 

Paris was in wild excitement; and a 
rumor that troops were marching upon the 
Assembly to disperse it converted excitement 
into madness. The populace marched to- 
ward the Bastille, and in another hour the 
heads of the Governor and his officials were 
being carried on pikes through the streets of 
Paris. 

The horrible drama had opened, and events 
developed with the swiftness of a falling 
avalanche. Louis might have followed his 
fleeing nobles. But always vacillating, and 
"letting I dare not wait upon I would," 
the opportunity was lost. He and his family 
were prisoners in the " Temple, " while an 
awful travesty upon a court of justice was 
sending out death-warrants for his friends 
and adherents faster than the guillotine 
could devour them. 

More and more furious swept the torrent, 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 93 

gathering to itself all that was vile and 
outcast. Where were the pale-faced, deter- 
mined patriots who sat in the "National As- 
sembly"? Some of them riding with Dukes 
and Marquises to the guillotine. Was this 
the equality they expected when they cried 
" Down with the Aristocrats " ? 

Did they think they could guide the whirl- 
wind after raising it? As well whisper to 
the cyclone to level only the tall trees, or to 
the conflagration to burn only the temples 
and palaces. 

With restraining agencies removed, relig- 
ion, government, King, all swept away, that 
hideous brood born of vice, poverty, hatred, 
and despair came out from dark hiding- 
places ; and what had commenced as a patri- 
otic revolt had become a wild orgie of 
bloodthirsty demons, led by three master- 
demons, Robespierre, Marat, and Danton, 
vying with each other in ferocity. 

Then we see that simple girl thinking by 
one supreme act of heroism and sacrifice, 
like Joan of Arc, to save her country. Fool- 
ish child ! Did she think to slay the monster 
devouring Paris by cutting off one of his 



94 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

heads? The death of Marat only added to 
the fury of the tempest ; and the f alHng of 
Charlotte Corday's head was not more 
noticed than the falling of a leaf in the 
forest. 

On the 21st of January, 1793, Louis XVI. 
embraced for the last time his adored wife 
and children; then, with every possible 
indignity, was strapped to a plank and shoved 
under the guillotine. 

The kindest-hearted, most inoffensive gen- 
tleman in Europe had expiated the crimes 
of his ancestors. 

A few months later, Marie Antoinette, 
daughter of the proud Empress Maria The- 
resa, and child of the Caesars, was borne along 
the same road. And how bravely she met 
her awful fate ! We forget her follies, her 
reckless grasping after pleasures, in view of 
her horrible sufferings and in admiration of 
her courage as she rides to her death ; sitting 
in that hideous tumbril, head erect, pale, 
proud, defiant, as if upon a throne. 

With the death of the King and Queen 
the madness had reached its height, and a 
revulsion of feeling set in. There was a 



KVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 95 

surfeit of Mood, and an awaken ii:p^ sense of 
horror, which turned upon the instigators. 
Danton fell, and finally, when amid cries of 
"Death to the tyrant!" Robespierre was 
dragged wounded and shivering to the fate 
he had brought upon so many thousands, the 
drama which had opened at the Bastille was 
fittingly closed. 

The great battle for human liberty had 
been fought and won. Religious freedom 
and political freedom were identical in prin- 
ciple. The right of the human conscience 
proclaimed by Luther in 1517 had in 1703 
only expanded into the large conception of 
all the inherent rights of the individual. 

It had taken centuries for English persist- 
ence to accomplish what France, with such 
appalling violence, had done in as many 
years. It had been a furious outburst of pent- 
up force ; but the work had been thorough. 
Not a germ of tyranny remained. The in- 
crustations of a thousand years were not 
alone broken, but pulverized ; the privileged 
classes were swept away, and their vast 
estates, two-thirds of the territory of France, 
ready to be distributed among the rightful 



96 EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE. 

owners of the soil, those who by toil and 
industry could win them. France was as 
new as if she had no history. There was 
ample opportunity for her people now. 
What would they do with it? 



CHAPTER XII. 

It is strange to read that the armies went 
on fighting battles automatically, even while 
there was no central head to direct them. 
While the ghastly scenes were enacting in 
Paris, and while Josejjhine de Beauharnais 
was at the Conciergerie listening with 
blanched face to the call of her husband's 
name on the death-roll for the day, a young 
lieutenant of artillery, only twenty-four 
years old, was at Toulon, winning his first 
military honors. He would have been 
thought a strange prophet who had said 
that in less than ten years the young Cor- 
sican lieutenant would be Emperor, and the 
prisoner at the Conciergerie Empress of the 
French! Nor did M. de Beauharnais, as he 
rode to execution, dream that forty-five 
years later his grandson would over the 
same stones be borne to his coronation. 



98 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

In the anarchy which prevailed after the 
Kevolution, the young hero of Toulon was 
called upon to quell a riot in Paris. The 
people realized they had met a master. For 
twenty-five years from that day, the history 
of France, and indeed of Europe, was that 
of one man, Napoleon Bonaparte. Com- 
mander-in-chief of the Army, then First 
Consul of the Kepublic, then Emperor — the 
steps in his ascent were as rapid and as be- 
wildering as the movements in one of his 
own campaigns. France, groping about 
helplessly among the wreckage of the past, 
believed what she most desired was liberty 
and self-government. 

This Italian, who was a French citizen 
even only by merest accident, knew her 
better than she did herself, and that what 
she really wanted was a fresh mantle of 
glory to cover her humiliation, and — a 
master. 

Leading a broken, unpaid, half-clothed 
army into Italy, he electrified France and 
all Europe. Before the world had really 
found out who he was, and whence he had 
come, he had conquered all of Northern 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 99 

Italy, part of Austria and Belgium, had 
created a Cisalpine Republic out of the frag- 
ments, and was making treaties and dictat- 
ing terms to kings and princes. 

France, discredited and almost disgraced 
among the monarchies of Europe, found 
herself suddenly feared and glorious. Napo- 
leon had captured the most imaginative and 
military people in Europe. The rest of the 
way was easy. Prudent, discreet, knowing 
when to wait, and when to come down like 
an avalanche, this marvellous man held 
France in his hands, and placed Europe 
under his feet. 

The people which had exerted such super- 
human effort for freedom were held by a 
hand more despotic than Richelieu's, more 
destructive to popular freedom than that of 
Louis XIV. ; and the more absolute his rule, 
the more overpowering his authority, the 
better pleased they seemed to be. 

But, was there not equal opportunity for 
every man in the Empire? Every soldier's 
knapsack, might it not hold a Marshal's 
baton? Was not the Emperor himself a 
living illustration of what a man from the 



100 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

people might become? And then what did 
it mean to Frenchmen to be suddenly lifted 
to dazzling ascendancy in Europe? Who 
would not willingly serve a master who 
could bring Hapsburg, Hohenzollern, Ro- 
manoff, Bourbon, crouching at his feet — 
who could tear down states, and set them 
up, and if an extra throne were needed for 
a retainer, could carve a new state from ter- 
ritory of friend and foe alike, and place a 
diadem upon every head in his domestic or 
military household? It was the most stu- 
pendous display of personal power ever be- 
held, England alone standing upright in 
his presence, and in the end accomplishing 
his ruin. 

When Austria with a reluctant shudder 
bestowed her princess upon the invincible 
parvenu, and when France with regretful 
pity saw the adored Josephine set aside for 
that disdainful royal maiden, Marie Louise, 
at that moment Napoleon passed the merid- 
ian of his greatness. 

It had taken just fifteen years to make 
the most astonishing and dazzling chapter 
in French history; and then came " Moscow" 



EVOLUTION 01^ AX EMPIRE. 101 

and "Elba," to be quickly followed by 
"Waterloo" and "St. Helena." And then 
for France — most incomprehensible of all — a 
return to the Bourbons ! It had required the 
greatest tragedy of modern times to get rid 
of them, and here they were again, Louis 
XVIII. and Charles X., as overbearing and 
as arrogant as if their brother's head had 
not dropped into a basket in 1793. When 
somebody said of the Bourbons "they learn 
nothing and forget nothing," he was inaccu- 
rate. They had certainly forgotten the 
French Eevolution. 

But death removed the first, and popular 
sentiment the second, of these relics of an 
obsolete past. And a new experiment was 
tried. This time it was the son of Philippe 
Egalite, that wickedest of all the regicides, 
who came smiling and bowing before the 
people as a popular sovereign, who would 
beneficently rule under a liberal constitu- 
tion. Whatever his father had been, Louis 
Philippe was far from being a wicked man. 
Whether teaching school in Switzerland, 
or giving French lessons in America, or 
wearing the kingly crown in France, he was 



102 EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE. 

the kindest hearted, most inoffensive of 
gentlemen. 

When in the pre-revolutionary days we 
read of France making war, it means that 
the King, or his minister, with more or less 
deference to the will of a few thousand 
nobles, did so. They are the France referred 
to. The real France was not consulted and 
had nothing to do with it, unless it were to 
fill the ranks with fathers, sons, and hus- 
bands, and then pay the taxes imposed to 
support them. But times were changed. 
Under a constitutional monarchy, the King 
does not govern ; he reigns. Louis Philippe 
was King of the French, — not of France. 
He was chosen by the people as their orna- 
mental figurehead. But what if he ceased 
to be ornamental? What was the use of a 
King who in eighteen years had added not a 
single ray of glory to the national name, 
but who was using his high position to in- 
crease his enormous private fortune, and 
incessantly begging an impoverished coun- 
try for benefits and emoluments for five 
sons? 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 103 

An excellont father, truly, though a short- 
sighted one. His power had no roots. The 
cutting from the Orleans tree had never 
taken hold upon the soil, and toppled over 
at the sound of Lamartine's voice proclaim- 
ing a Republic from the balcony of the 
"Hotel deVille." 

When invited to step down from his royal 
throne, he did so on the instant. Never did 
King succumb with such alacrity, and never 
did retiring royalty look less imposing, than 
when Louis Philippe was in hiding at Havre 
under the name of "William Smith," wait- 
ing for safe convoy to England, without- 
having struck one blow in defence of his 
throne. 

But three terrible words had floated into 
the open windows of the Tuileries. With 
the echoes of 1792 still sounding in his ears, 
"Liberty," "Equality," and "Fraternity," 
shouted in the streets of Paris, had not a 
pleasant sound ! 

Eepublicanism was an abiding sentiment 
in France, even while two dull Bourbon 
Kings were stupidly trying to turn back 



104 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

the hands on the dial of time, and while an 
Orleans, with more supple neck, was posing 
as a popular sovereign. During all this tire- 
some interlude, the real fact was developing. 
A Republican sentiment which had existed 
vaguely in the air was materializing, con- 
solidating, into a more and more tangible 
reality in the minds of thinking men and 
patriots. 

The ablest men in the country stood with 
plans matured, ready to meet this crisis. A 
Republic was proclaimed ; M. de Lamartine, 
Ledru-Rollin, General Cavaignac, M. Ras- 
pail, and Louis Napoleon were rival candi- 
dates for the office of President. 

The nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, and 
son of Hortense, was only known as the 
perpetrator of two very absurd attempts 
to overthrow the monarchy under Louis 
Philippe. But since the remains of the 
great Emperor had been returned to France 
by England, and the splendors of the past 
placed in striking contrast with a dull, lustre- 
less present, there had been a revival of Na- 
poleonic memories and enthusiasm. Here 
was an opportunity to unite two powerful 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 105 

sentiments in one man — a Napoleon at the 
bead of Republican France would express 
the glory of the past and the hope of the 
future. 

The magic of the name was irresistible. 
Louis Napoleon was elected President of the 
second Republic, and history prepared to re- 
peat itself. What sort of a ruler would he 
be — this dark, mysterious, unmagneticman? 
Even should he not turn out well, no great 
harm could be done. It was only for four 
years. His hand had not the steely fineness 
of touch of his great uncle's, but it was 
strong, and guided, they soon found, by a 
subtle intelligence. 

The overthrow of Monarchy in France 
had set fire to Republicanism in Europe, 
Kossuth with transcendent eloquence lead- 
ing a revolution in Hungary, and Garibaldi 
and Mazzini with pen and sword in Ital}^ 
Europe was in a blaze of revolt. The first 
great military exploit of Napoleon Bona- 
parte had been in Italy, and so was his 
nephew's, but with this difference — the ob- 
ject of the one was to build up Republics on 
the other side of the Alps, and of the other to 



106 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

pull them down. Garibaldi and Mazzini 
were driven out of Italy by French bayonets, 
which also propped up the pontifical throne 
for the fugitive Pope. 

The Assembly soon realized that in this 
Prince-President it had no automaton to 
deal with. A deep antagonism grew, and 
the cunningly devised issue could not fail to 
secure popular support to Louis Napoleon. 
When an Assembly is at war with the Pres- 
ident because it desires to restrict the suf- 
frage, and he to make it universal, can 
any one doubt the result? He was safe in 
appealing to the people on such an issue, and 
sure of being sustained in his Proclamation 
dissolving the Assembly. He was gathering 
the reins into his hands with the astute cour- 
age of his uncle. Moving on almost identi- 
cal lines with his great original, the nephew 
set his face toward the same goal. 

The French people must have realized they 
were being betrayed. They must have seen 
that this ambitious plotter was slipping the 
old fetters of arbitrary power into position. 
But, under the powerful spell of the Napole- 
onic name, lulled to tranquillity by the gift 



EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE. 107 

of suffr«igo, and fascinated by tlie growing 
splendors of an ingenious reproduction of 
the most brilliant chapter in French history, 
they were unresistingly drawn into the Im- 
perial net. 

France was for the second time an Em- 
pire, and Napoleon III. was Emperor of the 
French. 

His Mephistophelian face did not look as 
classic under the laurel wreath as had his 
uncle's, nor had his work the blinding splen- 
dor nor the fineness of texture of his great 
model. But then, an imitation never has. 
It was a marble masterpiece, done in plas- 
ter ! But what a clever reproduction it was ! 
And how, by sheer audacity, it compelled 
recognition and homage, and at last even 
adulation in Europe! — and what a clever 
stroke it was, for this heavy, unsympathetic 
man to bring up to his throne from the peo- 
ple a radiant Empress, who would capture 
romantic and .Tsthetic France ! 

It was a far cry from cheap lodgings in 
New York to a seat upon the Imperial 
throne of France ; but human ambition 
is not easily satisfied. A Pelion always 



108 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

rises beyond an Ossa. It was not enough to 
feel that he had re-estabhshed the prosperity 
and prestige of France, that fresh glory had 
been added to the Napoleonic name. Was 
there not after all a certain irritating reserve 
in the homage paid him, was there not a 
touch of condescension in the friendship of 
his royal neighbors? And had he not always 
a Mordecai at his gate — while the Faubourg 
St. Germain stood aloof and disdainful, smil- 
ing at his brand-new aristocracy ? 

War is the thing to give solidity to em- 
pire and to reputation ! Neither France nor 
Europe can withstand the magic of military 
renown. And so, upon a quickly improvised 
pretext, the French Emperor started, amid 
the booming of cannon and the wild accla- 
mations of a delighted people, upon a new 
career of conquest. The insolent Prussians 
were to be chastised ; and, incidentally, Eu- 
rope was to be made to tremble ! 

In a few months the bubble was pricked. 
The glittering French army proved to be a 
thing of tinsel and fustian. With no reality, 
no power to stand before the solid German 
battalions, it melted like hoar-frost. Napo- 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 109 

leon TIT. was prisoner of war at Sedan, and 
Iving William, Unser Fritz, and Von Moltke 
were at Versailles. 

Moved by his colossal misfortunes, and 
^perhaps partly in displeasure at having a 
-French Republic once more at her door, Eng- 
land offered asylum to the deposed Emperor. 
There, from the seclusion of "Chiselhurst," 
he and his still beautiful Eugenie watched 
the Republic weathering the first days of 
storm and stress, and coming out at last 
stable and triumphant. 

The weary exile felt that not in his day 
would the reaction come. But his son 
would jet wear the Imperial crown which 
was liis birthright. Futile dream! The boy was 
destined to cruel fate— to be slain by Zulu 
assegai, while fighting the battles of England, 
— an England still glorying in the name of 
Waterloo! Strange ending for the heir to 
the name of Napoleon Bonaparte. 

But the reaction Louis Napoleon so confi- 
dently hoped for did not come. With mili- 
tary pride humbled in the dust, national 
pride wounded by the loss of two provinces, 
loaded down with an immense war indem- 



110 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

nity, the people set about the task of rehabil- 
itation ; in an incredibly short time, the gall- 
ing debt was paid, financial prosperity and 
political strength restored, and with mili- 
tary organization second to none in Europe, 
France, with revengeful eyes fastened on 
Germany, waits for the day of reckoning. 

For twenty-four years the Eepublic has 
existed. Communistic fires always smoulder- 
ing have again and again burst forth — 
demagogues, fanatics, and those creatures 
for whom there is no place in organized 
society, whose element is chaos, standing 
ready to fan the fires of revolt ; while Orlean- 
ist, Bonapartist, Bourbon, are ever on the 
alert, watching for opportunity to slip in 
through the open door of Kevolution. 

England in conscious superiority smiles at 
a nation which has had seven political revo- 
lutions in a hundred years. Republic, then 
Empire, then a return to the Bourbons, then 
a limited Monarchy under Louis Philippe, 
then Republic, followed by Empire again, 
and now for the third time a Republic ! 

But France, complex, mobile, changeful 
as the sea, in riotous enjoyment of her new- 



EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIKE. Ill 

found liberties, casts off a form of govern- 
ment as she would an ill-litting garment. 
She knows the value of tranquillity — she 
had it for one thousand years ! The people^ 
which have only breathed the upper air for a 
a century — the people, who were stifled under 
feudalism, stamped upon by Valois Kings, 
riveted down by Richelieu, then prodded, 
outraged, and starved by Bourbons, have be- 
come a great nation. Many-sided, resource- 
ful, gifted, it matters not whether they have 
called the head of their government Con- 
sul, Emperor, King, or President. They are 
a race of freemen, who can never again be 
enslaved by tyrannous system. 

It was a bright day for France when that 
ambitious young Emperor of Germany sent 
his great Chancellor into retirement; and 
another bright day when, taking offence at 
scant courtesy at the hands of the Czar, he 
left ajar the back door to his dominions. An 
alliance between despotic Russia thirsting 
for the waters of the Mediterranean, and Re- 
publican France thirsting for revenge, is the 
darkest cloud on the German horizon to-day. 



112 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 

There is no longer thought of conflict be- 
tween any two nations of Europe. The next 
war is to be one of tremendous combinations. 
National alliances are shifting and uncertain. 
But at the time this is written (1894) Ger- 
many, Austria, and Italy are drawn together 
in one hostile camp, while France and Russia, 
in loving embrace, stand in the other; and 
England, aloof and suspicious, holds herself 
ready to hurl her weight against whichever 
one obstructs her path to India. 

For France there may be in store new 
revolutions, and fresh overturnings. Not 
anchored as is England, in an historic past 
which she reverences, and with a singular- 
ly gifted and emotional people who are the 
sport of the current of the hour, who can 
predict her future ! But whatever that 
future may be, no American can be indiffer- 
ent to the fate of a nation to whom we owe 
so much. Nor can we ever forget that in the 
hour of our direst extremity, and regardless 
of cost to herself, she helped us to establish 
our liberties, and to take our place among 
the great nations of the earth. 



